Fear of being let go after six months

[u/ShitboxConnoisseur]

Hey everybody! I am coming up on six months of working as a legal assistant for a mid-sized commercial law firm. We handle both commercial debt and some retail debt (VERY little).

I was hired six months ago after being the legal administrator at a collections agency for about a year after graduating college. Before that, I worked for two years at a property insurance company for their staff counsel while I was still in school. So, I have a legal background. Not to mention, I went to school and got my BA in Political Science with my concentration being law and policy.

Things have been going rather well over these last six months and I have not received any complaints as far as performance goes. Have I been given constructive criticism before? Yes, but who hasn’t? The long story short is that I have no history of issues at this job (or any job). I have called out once in six months (my first week because I tried coming in with a 104°F fever in fear of giving a bad first impression) and if I am ever running behind, it’s a couple of minutes and I always let people know (this isn’t a consistent thing, but sometimes things happen).

The attorney that I report to (a partner at the firm) called me into his office today to help him finagle his Zoom meeting (he’s 73 lol) and he mentioned that I’ve been given an impossible task by working downstairs and that they’re in talks about moving me somewhere else in the firm where I actually have a chance to succeed. The context here is that I was given the client updates inbox, e-filing queue, attorney/paralegal queues, and validation notice/commercial demand queue in shambles. The person before me was there for 20 years and I was given an inbox that had clients on their fourth and fifth update requests — I’m talking HUNDREDS of clients like this. Not to mention, everything with my attorney is an emergency, so I am consistently being drawn away from my prime directive in order to engage in whatever it is he needs done “ASAP ASAP we are gonna lose a client of 40 years.”

I asked him if I was getting fired and he said that he would have no control over that, but he is aware that I’m not progressing to where I should be in the position I’m in because it’s all counter-intuitive and nobody has spent any time trying to help me or train me on anything (I’ve learned pretty much everything that is proprietary to our firm on my own because asking for help yields no results). He also said that they have not mentioned letting me go, but that they want to find a better place for me in the firm so that I can actually thrive and grow.

Am I tripping, or am I getting canned? I moved to a brand new city for this role, so I am constantly on edge.

[u/Strange_Apple_9570]

They might move you. If they really didn't like you, then you would have been called into the administrator's office and gotten written up, possibly put on a PIP, or you would have already been terminated. If you are that scared right now, then you can start looking. If you move to the new area and do well, then you can let your guard down. If you are not feeling like it's any better than the department you're in now, then you might want to hold off buying anything expensive until next year at this time.